A blog dedicated to the struggles of raising children, most especially the new world of "adult" children.

Friday, January 13, 2012

From "Unsettling to Unsettling", waiting for "Settling" to arrive....

I do my best thinking in the car, driving with the music playing. I have always told the kids that music reaches me the way other things can't. It pierces me deep. I must sound like a "beet nick" saying that. I don't even know if I spelled that right.

Driving to an appointment this morning I was once again in tears thinking and talking aloud as I often do. I realize that I must think I sound pretty good to myself. I decided to ME, I make perfect sense. Looking back at all the times I have sat and talked, and talked and talked to my eldest she probably tuned me out long before I ever finished. My heart was in the right place but now it seems I was seeing more of "ME" sitting there and less of her. I was making her, and her problems just like "what I did", or would tell her "what my parents" did. I talked way more than I listened. I tried to force her to talk when she did not want to and that made her very upset. She never wanted me to see her cry or emotional because she didn't want me to get to her. She didn't want me to think I had control over her. I never wanted control over her, I just hated to leave things unresolved an so I pressed matters until a volcanic eruption of emotions by the both of us, and then some sense of resolution. It was wrong.

Today I sit and feel unsettled and keep waiting for the settled feelings but they don't come. I cannot control the actions of my daughter. I can keep her in my prayers and take care of me and the rest of my family. That is what I can control.

I take comfort in the fact that she has been raised by a family who loves her dearly. She comes from a family where eating dinner together as a family every night was ritual. Just the other night her little 6 year old brother said "too bad K is not here. You know it's not a big family dinner unless K is here". She has been raised being taught that she can do whatever she sets her mind to. She comes from a big family with Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and cousins who love her. She has been taught from the moment she was placed in my arms that she is a Child of God. I told her once while sitting in a parking lot recently that no matter what she professed to me to ever believe that I would respect her if I knew she had really studied and gained a knowledge and testimony of it on her own....but, I wanted her to know that a seed was planted deep inside of her and it would always be there no matter what. She will always know she is a child of our Heavenly Father, that will be with her no matter her decisions in life. Whatever she chooses, that feeling will tug at her heart.

Someone gave me advice today... STOP, and just leave her be. I have left her alone. I think it was more a "STOP" and don't take anymore of you away emotionally from your husband or the rest of your kids because of this. She wants this, let her spread her wings, see what happens. In theory it sounds so easy to say, and type but to do this for me and by that I mean for me to quit worrying, to quit thinking horrible things is incredibly difficult. You see that picture of the ferris wheel with the overgrowth on it? Yeah, that is what I want the ride I am on to look like. I want it to stop moving, the whole carnival to move along, and things to just grow up around it and it become a distant memory. I don't want my sweet daughter to be a memory, just all this heartache.